In "The West Wing," politically correct, community organizing fantasy of what it takes to be President of the United States, this is some awesome stuff:
And for those who are in uniform who have experienced sexual assault, I want them to hear directly from their Commander-In-Chief that I've got their backs. I will support them. And we're not going to tolerate this stuff and there will be accountability. If people have engaged in this behavior, they should be prosecuted.
And anybody in the military who has knowledge of this stuff should understand this is not who we are. This is not what the U.S. military is about. And it dishonors the vast majority of men and women in uniform who carry out their responsibilities and obligations with honor and dignity and incredible courage every single day.
So bottom line is I have no tolerance for this. I have communicated this to the Secretary of Defense. We're going to communicate this again to folks up and down the chain in areas of authority, and I expect consequences.
So I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programs or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable -- prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period. It's not acceptable.
In the real world, people—and I think it will come as a shock to some of the more "out there" Democrats that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines(maybe) are people too—are entitled to not be railroaded when accused of crimes.
Two defendants in military sexual assault cases cannot be punitively discharged, if found guilty, because of “unlawful command influence” derived from comments made by President Barack Obama, a judge ruled in a Hawaii military court this week.
Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton ruled during pretrial hearings in two sexual assault cases — U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes — that comments made by Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing, according to a court documents obtained by Stars and Stripes.
I bite my tongue here a lot out of my respect for civil discourse and the office of the President of the United States. But what President Obama did by apparently poisoning the well of military justice is not just amateur hour, it's profoundly stupid.
Seriously, the common thread between this and all of the other controversies currently swirling around him is that he's a goddamned fucking moron when it comes to actually managing an organization of any size or purpose.
The man is a smartly-sold, media-defended, utterly incompetent, fucking idiot and the ultimate irony is that, again and again, in his incompetence he turns out to be the enemy of the very people he claims he his trying to help.
Some thoughts on the NSA controversy after a week of wading through charges, denials, counter-charges, and spin.
When the Russians and the Germans suggest that you should dial back on the secret police shit, you should probably listen. Okay, that's not entirely fair, but you have to roll with the awesome irony.
Good news! House Democrat Loretta Sanchez, speaking after a briefing to House members from the NSA today, declared that she learned the extent of the domestic surveillance program "is significantly more than what is out in the media today." I can hardly wait.
We are told that there are checks and balances in how all of that data about us can be accessed, so we are protected from it being used for political or personal gains or attacks. For example, in the last few years the FISA court appears to have actually denied one of the thousands of requests.
Setting sarcasm aside for a moment, I have no doubt that what has been revealed so far, and probably what has not, has actually been done within the law. The problem I see is that the applicable Constitutional boundaries of the law were defined back in 1979, when the Digital Age was still in its infancy. We give all sorts of data records to companies, not just related to phone calls, that the US Supreme Court couldn't even imagine 34 years ago. If nothing else, the revelations around the scope and scale of NSA domestic data collection reinforce that we urgently need to have a debate about governmental violations of personal privacy, and we should throw in the now common corporate violations as well.
I have three long posts that I started and then haven't finished on this topic. Partly because new information overtook them and partially because it's a complicated subject that gets pretty deep if given any kind of thoughtful treatment. I lean against domestic data gathering such as this, but it's value in potentially preventing terrorist attacks can't be denied. Is it worth the damage to privacy and the dangerous risk of abuse? I don't think so, but that's another post.
June of 1863 once again found the major Union and Confederate forces in the Eastern Theater facing off at Fredricksburg. Lee's victory over Hooker at Chancellorsville three weeks earlier, even with the terrible loss of Stonewall Jackson, had reinforced his confidence that he and his army could outmaneuver and outfight the Army of the Potomac in a second invasion of the North. Taking the war to the North would ease the pressure on Virginia for awhile, and if he could smash the Union army it would, at a minimum, end the threat of a Union campaign on Richmond for the year and possibly end the war.
On June 3 Lee began to slip his forces quietly away from Fredricksburg. By June 5, Lee's I Corps under Longstreet and II Corps under Ewell had arrived in Culpepper, Va. The III Corps under A.P. Hill remained in and around fortified Fredricksburg to protect against a Union attack on the Confederate rear.
Meanwhile, Union Gen. Hooker had gotten wind of Confederate movements but was unsure of their intentions. If the Confederates were in fact leaving Fredricksburg, this might be an opportunity to overwhelm the rear guard and possibly go all the way to Richmond. On the evening of June 5, Union forces established a bridgehead on the rebel side of the Rappahannock River at Franklin's Crossing. What Hooker was going to do from there was unclear even in his own mind. What was Lee up to?
KOOCHICHING-NORTHERN ST. LOUIS-NORTHERN COOK/NORTHERN LAKE-
CENTRAL ST. LOUIS-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...INTERNATIONAL FALLS...ELY...ISABELLA...
HIBBING
322 PM CDT SUN JUN 2 2013
...FREEZE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 AM CDT MONDAY...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DULUTH HAS ISSUED A FREEZE
WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 AM CDT MONDAY.
* LOCATION...FAR NORTHERN MINNESOTA INCLUDING THE BORDER
REGION...IRON RANGE...AND INLAND AREAS OF THE ARROWHEAD.
* TEMPERATURE...EXPECT LOWS TONIGHT FROM THE MIDDLE TWENTIES TO
AROUND THIRTY.
I'm finally getting my gardens squared away today and tomorrow and the cool temps during the day are kind of nice for that, though lows in the 40s at night are a bit much. The lawn, totally out of control a week ago, has at last been wrestled into submission.
Last month Rob mentioned the controversy over the name "Redskins" for Washington D.C.'s NFL franchise and it's still simmering out there despite owner Dan Snyder emphatically saying "never" to a name change. I think rather than snarling at the political correctness behind the movement to change the team's name, we should embrace it as an opportunity to come up with a name more fitting to the area and its denizens.
For example, the Washington Imperials would better reflect the attitude of the locals I think.
On the other hand, a team name should be scary and intimidating and the Washington Taxmen would fit that bill. Or, to be gender neutral, perhaps the Washington Revenuers.
The Washington Peepers would be an homage to our growing surveillance state. Or maybe we could honor presidential power with the Washington Drones.
Given the growing role of the federal government as both mommy and daddy to so many, the Washington Parents might be a good fit.
The Washington Diplomats wouldn't work because a Diplomats QB probably wouldn't get very good protection.
We could honor big government with the Washington Bloat, or its workers with the Washington Functionaries.
Perhaps it's time to recognize suburban DC with the Washington Jejune.
If my grandmother was still alive she would probably vote to honor Congress with the name the Washington Stinkers, "stinker" being one of the harsher epithets she ever used. I would go with the Washington Rapscallions, which would have the humorous bonus that most Congressmen would likely think a rapscallion was some kind of cool horse.
I'm sure I could come up with even more. Feel free to add your own nominations if you wish.
Yep, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of giving Washington D.C.'s NFL franchise a name that truly reflects the area's current purpose and character.
Today marks three years tobacco-free. I'm surprised that I have made it this far without a single slip. I'm also glad that I haven't turned into one of those ex-smoker scolds who freak out if a smoker gets within 500 feet.
Over the three years I think I would have spent about $10,000(conservatively) on cigarettes if I hadn't quit. If anybody knows where that money went, please fill me in.
And if you smoke I encourage you to quit, but like I said, I won't be a scold about it. If you need some personal encouragement or advice on how to quit, I'll be happy to give that and talk about what worked for me.
After months of struggle to train, equip, and be seen as something more than just a token part of the war effort, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment found itself one day out of Boston, sailing on the transport De Lomay toward South Carolina and the hope of seeing combat.
The day before:
At nine o’clock on the morning on May 28, 1863, the 54th’s 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers gathered in the Boston Common and prepared to head to the battlefields of the South. They did so in spite of an announcement by the Confederate Congress that every captured black soldier would be sold into slavery and every white officer in command of black troops would be executed. Cheering well-wishers, including the anti-slavery advocates William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, lined Boston’s streets. “I know not,” Governor Andrew said at the close of the parade, “where in all human history to any given thousand men in arms there has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you.”
Bemused motorists took photographs of the huge JCPenney billboard advertising the kettle as they drove past it on the 405 Interstate highway near Culver City in California, one of America's busiest stretches of roads.
What caught their eye?
The result, of course, was a minor furor.
Personally, I think they are getting all steamed up over nothing.
And it's not the first time they've duped their readers with that image. Kind of makes you wonder how many other ways they are misinforming people, doesn't it?
If this was a one-off it might be different, but climate change alarmism is riddled with gimmicks like this that are meant to manipulate us into agreement, not persuade us using real science and reason.
If climate change believers don't want to be seen as a bunch of con artists, they kind of need to stop acting like a bunch of con artists.
More: In the Eugene Robinson op-ed accompanied by that deceptive photo is another major bit of propaganda that is going around now and that's the resurrection of the claim of 97% consensus among scientists regarding human caused climate change.
Remember the last time? Here's my post on it from February last year. The figure of 97% then was based on a thoroughly rotten bit of selective data and statistical manipulations and it was complete bullshit. The same can be said for the latest "study." Here, from Christopher Monckton, are just some of the criticisms of the report:
It did not discuss, still less refute, the principle that the scientific method is not in any way informed by argument from consensus, which thinkers from Aristotle via Alhazen to Huxley and Popper have rejected as logically fallacious.
Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”.
It did not put a quantitative value on the term “very likely”, and it did not define what it meant by “current” warming. There has been none for at least 18 years.
It cited as authoritative the unscientifically-sampled surveys of “consensus” by Doran & Zimmerman (2009) and Anderegg et al. (2010).
It inaccurately represented the views of scientists whose abstracts it analysed.
It disregarded two-thirds of the 12,000 abstracts it examined, on the unscientific ground that those abstracts had expressed no opinion on Man’s climatic influence.
It declared that the one-third of all papers alleged to have endorsed the “consensus” really amounted to 97% of the sample, not 33%.
It suggested that the “consensus” that most recent warming is manmade is equivalent to the distinct and far less widely-supported notion that urgent action to prevent future warming is essential to avert catastrophe. Obama fell for this, twittering that 97% found global warming not only real and manmade but also dangerous.
Assuming he really believes what he wrote, Eugene Robinson has just told the world that he has been conned and he doesn't even know it. The same goes for anybody you talk to who earnestly cites that phony 97% consensus. Most disturbing of all, the same applies to the President of the United States and he is basing policy on that.
Check that. The most disturbing thing is that the 97% "fact" will be difficult if not impossible to dislodge from the minds of the true believers. It has probably already become a literal article of faith to millions of people and their minds are closed, because much of climate alarmism these days resembles a religious belief more than science.
If we can't reverse that, if we can't bring truth and reason and real science back into the climate change discussion, we are well and truly screwed.
Even though it became a target-rich environment for humor a couple of days ago, I had figured I would take the high road and ignore the NYC mayor's race this year. Too many opportunities for low-brow humor and eventually I would cross the line somewhere.
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner is running for Mayor of New York City, but his website prominently features the Steel City.
Yep, his campaign website apparently had part of the Pittsburgh skyline as background in its masthead(since changed). I know, I'm sure he wasn't personally responsible, it's just part of the rolling clown car that his campaign is doomed to become. I mean...weiner for mayor. The various levels speak to me. How can they not?
I'll try to hop back up on the wagon, but I have the feeling that resistance is futile.
Good: A second round at the brace place has made Mom more comfortable. Having to wear it is still not exactly pleasant, but at least it's manageable. Now it's a matter of time and keeping our fingers crossed that there are no setbacks.
Bad: If the ages are correct here, of course the 18-year-old should be charged:
According to an affidavit for Kaitlyn's arrest, Kaitlyn and her girlfriend were both students at the Sebastian high school and started dating in November 2012. The victim told police they began a sexual relationship before Christmas and performed sexual acts on each other multiple times at the school and at Kaitlyn's home in Sebastian as recently as early January. The report indicates the victim was 14 and Kaitlyn was 18.
I don't care about the motivations of the young girl's parents or if they hate lesbians, the law is the law. 18-year-olds of any sexual orientation shouldn't be going after 14-year-olds. Good grief, how can that not be a no-brainer?
Out:The Minnesota DNR Eagle cam. There's not much activity now and they may turn it off until the fall nesting season begins.
In:The Minnesota DNR Falcon cam. I saw at least three eggs last week, but the pic must be on my home pc. This bird has a successful track record, so we should see a hatch anytime from about now through next week. I'll update the sidebar links.
Yes: It's a gorgeous day today and I'm eager to get some yard work done after about a week and 3.5" of rain. We'll see how eager I am after a few hours of that. If the weather holds my weekend will be all garden all the time.
No: A field trip for a couple of classes from a local elementary school turned disastrous yesterday when a gravel slide caught four boys while they were hunting for fossils at a park on the Mississippi River. Two boys were buried and killed and two others injured. Fossil hunting has been going on there for years, but it's apparently risky enough that St. Paul requires a permit and a waiver of liability before it will let groups do that. I suspect that will be the last field trip for that for some time.
Maybe: The new Vikings stadium design was unveiled a week and a half ago. I am pleased that it will be truly multi-purpose and serve the public even better than the Metrodome currently does. As far as the design goes, it kind of looks like a those new-agey churches people built in the 1970s and 80s. Maybe it will grow on me.
With all of the issues swirling around the Obama administration right now and the inevitable partisan spin and counter-spin, lots of lines are getting blurred between actions that are basically failures and those that rise to the level of being truly scandalous. In the process, I think we are also mostly missing a few elephants in the room and that is confusing things even more. Here are a few observations on the issues related to Libya.
The first failure that needs to be addressed, and it provides context for discussing Benghazi, is the utter disaster of the Obama administration and NATO's intervention in Libya. Powerful Republicans, Democrats, and major media figures all wanted it to happen, so it's not just Obama, but that's also a big reason why nobody inside the beltway wants to talk about the wreckage that is Libya today.
It was supposed to be a "days, not weeks" humanitarian mission to keep Muammar Gaddafi and his regime from killing perhaps as many as 5,000 of his own people in Benghazi and Misrata. Unfortunately, that UN, African Union, and Arab League authorized humanitarian mission was quickly perverted into regime change by our NATO friends and President Obama and some other American politicians of all stripes went along.
The result was seven more months of civil war costing the lives of more like 30,000 Libyans, and possibly as many as 50,000, and leaving tens of thousands more wounded. We'll probably never have a full accounting however, because nobody in the political establishment wants to know and the very media that has howled to the rooftop about every civilian death in Iraq and Afghanistan has not exactly been eager to do the same under the Obama administration.
Today Libya teeters on the edge of chaos and breakup. UPI recently reported that there are now "...an estimated 500 militias and armed groups across Libya with an estimated 250,000 men under arms outside of government control" and al Qaeda influence continues to grow, especially in the east. Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi visiting fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs recently concluded that "...the survivability of Libya in its present form over the next decade is highly in doubt."
Oil revenues will probably keep Libya or its remnants from devolving totally into Somalia-like states, but even in the best case scenario that a weak central government survives we can expect al Qaeda to find a home in the east and the mostly lawless south.
It's impossible to know what would have happened if NATO had stayed within its humanitarian mandate and just imposed a no-fly zone while stopping Gaddafi's army and secret police in the desert outside of Benghazi. Could a cease-fire have been managed and tens of thousands of lives saved? With NATO power looming over him, would it have been possible to negotiate significant political concessions from Gaddafi and his regime?
I think a case can be made that a peaceful resolution was unlikely, but we will never know because it was never even tried.
The failure goes beyond Libya. When NATO and the US grossly exceeded their mandate with a wink and a nod it did not go unnoticed by the BRICS and other nations. At this point the chance that the UN or any regional groups will give NATO or the US any mandates for further humanitarian military intervention is slim to none, and as they say, slim has left town. See Syria. This problem was mentioned at the time in some quarters, but it was pretty much drowned out by the widespread and very vocal self-congratulations.
Another mistakenly discounted problem is the precedent that Obama set with America's involvement. The Democratic-sponsored War Powers Act lies dead and buried at the hands of a Democratic president. With absolutely no legislative approval from Congress, President Obama used the US military to attack and ultimately topple the government of another sovereign nation. Engrossed now in the eternal sunshine of the Obama presidency, that may not seem like a big deal, but as sure as the sun rises in the east, someday there will be a Republican president who uses the precedent to practice his own international regime change. When that happens Democratic protests will sound more than a little hollow, they'll be utterly pathetic in their hypocrisy.
Looking at the above with the humility and understanding that Obama and the major players in his administration lacked, the Libya intervention is a failure and not a scandal, even the odious abuse of the humanitarian mandate. In that I will recognize just how tough it is to operate at that level without a crystal ball, something Obama refused his predecessor.
The scandal in all of this is that nobody has been held accountable for the multiple bad decisions and policy failures that were made regarding Libya and Gaddafi, as abhorrent as he was, back in early 2011. Instead, the realities of Libya on 9/11/2012 and today have mostly been treated as though they spontaneously came to be rather than, in many significant ways, the result of those bad decisions and policies.
That has shamefully become known in some quarters as an example of "smart power."
The first step to understanding the failures and scandals around what happened in Benghazi on 9/11/2012 is to understand the multiple failures that came before.
More: Two other items that I forgot to mention.
We knew going in that the tribes of eastern Libya friendly to al Qaeda and mostly anti-American. On a per capita basis Libya sent more men to fight for al Qaeda in Iraq than any other Arab nation, and they mostly came from those eastern tribes. That's not to argue that they should have been left to suffer whatever fate Gaddafi had in store for them, but why in the world would we want to see them win?
Another issue is the unintended but not unforseeable consequence that deposing Gaddafi created regional instability. Mali has already seen one round destabilization and Algeria and Tunisia are seeing spillover effects now. Chad and Niger are also at risk. Deposing Gaddafi was good in some ways, but it also set in motion negative forces that may spin much of North Africa out of control.
We've seen a major spike in gasoline prices up here and it has many of us, including me, feeling more than a little ornery as the summer travel season comes on. One of the main reasons for living up here is summer up at the lake and of course, boating and fishing. Gasoline at $4.39/gallon or more puts a crimp in that for a lot of people. Here's the "heat map" as of this morning that shows why people are a little heated about this:
The issue is one of gasoline supply and not oil. Part of it is being blamed on the switch from government mandated winter to summer gasoline blends. Part of it is some areas are required to have reformulated gas blends specific to their market. But mostly the problem appears to be higher than normal refining capacity being offline for maintenance at the same time.
A natural question that has popped up in a number of media reports has been, "Why can't the refineries coordinate their maintenance times better?" The answer to that has uniformly been that such coordination would amount to collusion and violate antitrust laws.
So, what we have is government issuing mandates that restrict what gasoline products can be sold when and where, limiting the ability of the market to respond to spot shortages. Then, at the same time, they prohibit any agreements between refiners that would protect supplies for consumers and keep prices down.
Our government at work.
The worst thing is I don't believe anybody at the federal government level even gives a shit. For too many of them, and us for that matter, high gas prices are a feature, not a bug. As in, "Why do those idiots in flyover country need to drive up to the lake so much for anyway? There's plenty to do in the city and it will fight global warming."
It's not going to stop me, but I remember the days of living from paycheck to paycheck and those are the people it will hurt. Not that anybody gives a shit.
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